As always, his answer was Yes. It’s not that his memory was particularly bad, it just saved time. Time was a fluid quicksilver thing in his afterwork life. Tickety-tack on his Cloudbook keyboard, clickeratick of the trackpad on one hyperlink or another. Suddenly six o’clock was twelve-thirty, and he was bushed. enervated. Tonight it was surprise nudes of the latest RealiTeeVee sensation, an article about the myth of free will, all the news that was fit to tweet, down the hypertext rabbithole from one blogpost to another.

Just another night. New episodes of his old favorites, his attention span spanning ten open tabs at once in his WorldView browser. He rarely made it through a half-hour TV show non-stop anymore as he wandered with his wayward mind to the movie database tab to see who the tight twenty-two year-old with the thirty-four cees was in this scene, or to peek under the dress of Hollywood to see the hairy legs and other behind-the-scenes secrets posted to keep the mythmaking moving.

Just another night. and another sleepless fight to enjoin the dark and invoke the restful he craved, as he led the animal into the abyss with him waving the carrot of some thread of thought to distract the idiot sparking ideas in his head like so many shiny beads.

The dream was the same. At least, the deja vu hit him like that, even though even that might have been a conceit of the dream, dreaming that the dream is one you had before because the dream itself said as much and implied such. He was in a lovely room lit with natural light from windows above and beside him. An easel held a half-finished painting, a self-portrait. He was prettier there than he actually was–thinner, more defined, optimized even. And as each brush-stroke brought the creation to life, he himself felt diminished, diffuse, defused. He awoke weary bleary, too young he swore to feel this tired, too old to work this early for so little money.

His Cloudphone has its own WorldView browser, mail app and news reader, just like its bigger self. He sat on the shitter tapping the news and the mail of the world, both of which were just junk and spin of course. Same shit, he might as well peer into the bowl and read his fortune from the floaters. Ah well, people dying in Africa, people dying all around, as much an abstraction as anything else. He had fifteen minutes to shitshowershave and hit the road.

“Would you like Newsie to save this RSS feed?” He tapped Yes. Reactionary paranoia dotcom. All these sites have a spin, but he loved the spin this blog put him in. He loved ranting to his workfriends about how shockingly stupid the site was, it was like fiber for getting time moving between eight and five. All the better to be elsewhere.

Tonight the dream was same but different. Same lovely room, same easel, same picture-him gaining definition, coming clearer from the canvas. His hand moved the brush unbidden, under its own control until finally it finished. He gazed closer closer, taken by the expressioned eyes more real than reality. And found he was looking back at himself, picture pixel-perfect.

Closer closer. The picture devolved into individual bits, each stroke a rendering revealed. A choice made and confirmed with a Yes/No. “Would you like WorldView to save this to your favorites?”

(This has been hanging around my computer and Zoho Writer for a while, I figure I’d put it out here. If I assemble another book, this will probably fall into it. Let me know what you think please. Love to you all.)

I’m not sure exactly when it was I’d died. Could’ve been any of a half-dozen times. Three I can think of offhand, all attempts to OD. I had a rough few years. What can I tell you?

I always wondered what would happen when I finally kicked. Tunnel, light, heavenly hosts, all that bullshit I think not. The pineal gland in the brain puts out this drug called DMT. Causes shaman spirit-guide Carlos Castaneda kind of trips, so they say. Anyway, a lot of the stories you hear from the Jesustards who claim to have “come back” all read like a dose of this DMT the body just dumps into the bloodstream when the end comes. Too bad their minds were too hidebound to really enjoy the ride eh?

I will tell you exactly what happens when you die. You ready for this? No bullshit.

This morning I woke up before the alarm. Happens. Anyway, it was out of a dead sleep, which starts to make more sense when you think about it.

It was a dreamless sleep, which by itself is kind of odd. The night before, my mind was boiling over with thoughts, emotions, patterns, so many things going on in my life, what with work and the drab bunch of philistines pulling a paycheck alongside me, the sad fact I haven’t had a hand down my pants that wasn’t my own in six months–and don’t think my willie hasn’t noticed. The one thing worse than whiskey dick or coke dick is bored-of-jacking-off dick.

All these thoughts and notions crashing like waves against the craggy rocks, making my attempt to sleep like Scylla and Charybdis. Breathe in, breathe out…in…out…

I am awake. My head is not foggy, my body is not tired like an overflexed muscle. So I slept. I think.

Usually there is a dream or the remnant of a dream. Some kind of memento from Morpheus of his visit. Even if it’s of the brain assembling the mind again from the porridge. Nope. Nothing. Just me feeling a bit disjointed. Like falling asleep in your clothes and stumbling around the next morning, only I sleep in the buff. Steady ladies, I know it’s a heck of a vision.

So I get up and walk through the apartment, seeing what was what. Sure, it was my place. No one else would have a Kandinsky print in my age group. These idiots couldn’t spell Kandinsky even if they googled a picture of it with their phone camera.

Kitchen still stunk of biomatter, which happens when the dishes sit in rank water for a week. I’ve been busy, alright? A cigarette stubbed out in a shot glass. Hmmm. I haven’t smoked in eons, not since the last time I–

Oh. That.

A flash. Not an image, more an emotion. Then the pictures come. Handful of pills, a whisky chaser, another whisky chaser. And as much heroin as I could stuff up my nose.

It’s a weird sensation. Snort, snort, tilt the head up like you’re in some tacky ’80s nightmare, only instead of the slow rush like coke gives you, heart making a fist in your chest, it’s a slow falling sensation instead. Falling into cotton candy only instead of sweetness in the mouth, it’s a blurry bliss. And instead of that icy taste down the back of your nose, it’s, well, a taste kinda like tar smells. Or the packet from mushroom ramen soup.

I wander back up the hall to the bathroom. I scored the pills from this kid at the bar the night before and this girl helped me get the heroin from these two white guys in a brown Thunderbird. She was cool about it, I set her up and didn’t even ask her for a blowjob so she scored a handful of little baggies of powder for me too. I told her she could stay the night.

But, it appears she had the bad taste to die in my bathroom, the needle still in her arm. She’s motionless in the semi-dark room, her legs akimbo showing off some stubble and a small yellow pool.

I am not surprised though. We fucked the night before. That’s come back, how ’bout that? She smiled at me really sweet, said I was a nice guy, cupping my face in her hands. “This was better than I thought it would be,” she said as she left the room naked and shapely. She was maybe nineteen. Her face now shows a hint of that smile though her lips are blanched.

Why am I not surprised about this? Why am I not pissing myself as well, only with terror at the dead teen hooker in my bathroom?

The same reason I didn’t freak out at what I found laying in my bed. The same reason I wasn’t surprised at who I met in the hall outside my apartment naked as she was the night before.

The same reason I am standing at the front of this building now, still fishbelly naked. No one even giving a second glance except for all the other wandering nudists oblivious to the cold but not to my slowly dawning awareness at what the end really is. They all shake their heads, young and old as they too wander and stand and watch the cars and the world go by.